


The Way to Life and Love is a Curved Trajectory

by crossroadswrite



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Different First Meetings, M/M, POV Victor Nikiforov, Pre-Canon Canon Divergence, That's it, Unfairly Beautiful Katsuki Yuuri, Victor is a Yuuri fanboy, Yuri Plisetsky being a secret Yuuri fanboy, attempted humor, because of his ass, everyone is a Yuuri fanboy, just a lil bit, that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 06:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossroadswrite/pseuds/crossroadswrite
Summary: “Do you know Katsuki Yuuri?” Victor asks Chris, two minutes later, when he finally manages to convince himself to stop looking at the dip of Katsuki’s back and his powerful thighs in those tight Mizuno track pants, and the way his hands are poised in the air mid-skate, and his slicked back hair and brown eyes and flushed cheeks.Christophe hums into the phone in a way that suggests he not only knows Katsuki Yuuri but he’s acquainted with him. Chris’ version of acquaintance is very physical and usually involves a healthy amount of groping. “Don’tyou?”“He’s Japan’s Ace,” Victor says, trying to rack his brain for more information. “His step sequence is good?”Chris hums again. “You’re not that oblivious that you haven’t heard of Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri.”“Who?”(Or, the one where Victor falls - literally and then figuratively - for Yuuri. Also something about a Best Ass Poll that is way more official than it should be.)





	The Way to Life and Love is a Curved Trajectory

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello, just a quick warning that this one is unbetaed so if you find mistakes, feel free to point them out to me, I did my best in editing!!
> 
> Also happy holidays!!!!!!!!!!! And because nothing makes any of us more marry than a bootyful love story that starts with love at first losing a poll about having the best ass, I wrote this!!! I hope everyone is having a good time and I hope everyone can have a chill time this holiday season!!

Victor Nikiforov is twenty-six and getting to be that age where the only things that bring him joy are his dog, making his fans feel good, and the fact that he has consistently ranked top 2 in the bi-yearly poll of who has the best ass in Men’s Figure Skating.

He tries not to think too hard about it, like he tries to keep himself busy during the couple of weeks Yakov forces him to rest in-between seasons. He mostly accomplishes it by impulsively getting on a plane to visit places he’s never been to and attempting to kidnap Christophe while doing it.

Tragically, Christophe has a new boyfriend and Yakov roped Victor into helping the younger skaters with their jumps to make sure he doesn’t get arrested by the French police again, so Victor is left to sit on a bench in his favourite park in St. Petersburg and watch as Makkachin plays with other dogs and makes friends as he scrolls through Instagram and occasionally goes on the Best Ass in Men’s Figure Skating poll website to see if the results are already out.

Victor likes winning, and he likes ass, and he likes when people think he’s pretty, so it’s only logical that he does squats every day and walks around in heels occasionally to win for the prettiest ass. This year he doesn’t have the added edge of his fans being able to identify which ass is his and voting for it, since whoever is behind the website decided to crop the pictures to only showcase the butts. Something about not making this a rigged popularity contest and to let the best ass speak for itself.

Victor is all for that. If he wins he wants to do it fair and square.

He might lose this year and the thought is _exciting_. He likes that in this he _can_ lose. In this there aren’t any reporters asking him what it feels like to be a living legend. He likes that there’s a thrill to it, still.

So he refreshes the page and sees that the results have been announced and that _thrill_ of uncertainty shoots through him. Victor scrolls down to see who’s in first place. He’s intimately familiar with his own ass and with Chris’ ass, and this- this very nice and shapely ass is neither of theirs.

Victor scrolls down a little more to uncover the uncropped picture that comes with the name _Katsuki Yuuri_.

He’s not proud of the fact that his first thought is _who?_ because he should know the names of almost every skater in here, especially any skater who is still competing. He knows the name Katsuki and he knows that Katuski is Japan’s Ace but if someone had asked him to put a face to a name he probably wouldn’t be able to.

His second thought is more along the lines of _oh, hello, beautiful._

Ass aside, Yuuri Katsuki is very, very pretty, and Victor has absolutely no idea how he managed to miss someone like that in the skating circuits because _surely_ they’ve competed together. _Surely_.

 “Do you know Katsuki Yuuri?” Victor asks Chris, two minutes later, when he finally manages to convince himself to stop looking at the dip of Katsuki’s back and his powerful thighs in those tight Mizuno track pants, and the way his hands are poised in the air mid-skate, and his slicked back hair and brown eyes and flushed cheeks.

Christophe hums into the phone in a way that suggests he not only knows Katsuki Yuuri but he’s _acquainted_ with him. Chris’ version of acquaintance is very physical and usually involves a healthy amount of groping. “Don’t _you_?”

“He’s Japan’s Ace,” Victor says, trying to rack his brain for more information. “His step sequence is good?”

Chris hums again. “You’re not that oblivious that you haven’t heard of Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri.”

“Who?”

“Wow,” Chris says. “You _are_ out of the loop. Just Google him, darling. Or go on Phichit Chulanont’s Instagram if you truly want to feel blessed.”

“Okay?” Victor says, confused and feeling old and like he’s not part of the cool kids anymore. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Of course I know Katsuki Yuuri. We were together in Junior’s for a little bit. He’s a friend. His ass feels as nice as it looks.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t be too upset about losing to both me and Yuuri, darling. Bronze is nothing to scoff at.”

“Oh,” Victor says again, because Yuuri Katsuki is pretty enough that Victor didn’t even think to check where he had placed.

And then he hangs up and types Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri into the search bar and _wow_ , okay, he wasn’t expecting quite as many results. He types on the image search and _wow_.

Victor knows a lot about being pretty. He works very hard to look flawless, to take good care of his hair, his skin, his face, himself. He has perfected looking good from every angle possible. He has been called pretty since he was very young and smiling at strangers in the street. He could even be considered an expert in being pretty and Katsuki Yuuri is _very, very_ pretty. Not even Victor manages to look that good casually drinking a sports drink.

The Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri search results are filled with candids of Katsuki Yuuri looking unfairly beautiful doing a multitude of things, main of which existing.

Victor spends ten minutes scrolling down before he backtracks and opens as many tabs as he can with what seem to be fan clubs and blogs dedicated to Katsuki Yuuri. Then he opens Youtube.

The first search result is a video posted by someone called phichit+chu and is titled “5 Minutes of Katsuki Yuuri Sneezing”. Victor clicks on it.

Katsuki Yuuri sneezes like a kitten or a puppy or something equally small and adorable. He does it with his whole body and then always seems a little confused by what just happened. He looks very charming sneezing. Victor has never thought any other human being on this planet has looked charming sneezing in his entire life. Then he remembers reading somewhere that when you sneeze you make your orgasm face, so he rewinds the video and watches it again.

_Wow_.

The second video is called “please help me he does this every time he’s drunk”. Victor clicks on it because Yuuri is petting a dog in the thumbnail. Then he sits and watches for 10 minutes Katsuki Yuuri pull increasingly ridiculous stunts to try to pet dogs, including trying to scale a building to pet a dog on a balcony and running after a car. He actually catches up to the car and pets a very excited pitbull who slobbers all over him and bowls him over. Katsuki Yuuri giggles when the dog licks his neck. Victor feels himself melt on the spot. When the people in the car have to leave, Yuuri looks so upset they offer him a box of chicken nuggets.

Then Victor finds a video from some sort of exhibition Yuuri did and pulls it up because Yuuri is beautiful and Victor doesn’t know if he skates beautifully or not but he would be willing to bet his soul that he does.

Katsuki Yuuri moves his hands exactly like Victor has trained himself to and does his triple salchow exactly like Victor does too. His step sequence is _breathtaking_ , and when he’s done Victor finds he pulled his phone much closer to his face and that Yuuri must be a fan. Then he clicks on another exhibition, this time to Nature Boy from Moulin Rouge and Victor thinks he’s a little bit in love.

“Chris,” he says into his phone after watching way too many videos and almost running out of data. “Christophe, he’s so beautiful, Christophe. I’m so gay, what do I _do_?”

“That sounds like a _you_ problem,” Chris tells him, and then hangs up on him.

“Makkachin,” Victor cries and opens his arms so Makkachin can jump on him. Makkachin is filthy with leaves and mud and Victor is wearing Armani. He did not think this through. “You won’t hang up on me when I’m having a crisis will you, Makkachin?”

Makkachin licks his chin and then rests his face on Victor’s shoulder so Victor can hug him. Truly a good dog.

«»

A lot of people on Twitter want to know what is reaction to not ranking top 2 in the best ass pole is. Victor chooses a random person’s tweet and replies with something along the lines of: _The voters have excellent taste! I couldn’t have lost to better men._

(Somewhere in Detroit Katsuki Yuuri screeches at a decibel only heard by dogs and then lobs his phone across the rink.)

Two weeks later, Victor is getting drunk to a soap opera re-run. He has his phone open on Twitter and is scrolling down all the posts he’s @-ed in. This is a notoriously bad idea. Nothing good ever comes out of drunk Victor on Twitter. _Nothing_. He can practically hear his PR manager having a stroke.

He starts replying to some tweets. Somehow forgets himself and replies to _How does it feel to be the prettiest man in all of figure skating?_ With _I wouldn’t know, you’ll have to ask @y-katsuki_.

Someone asks him for selfies. Victor takes five of him with Makkachin and uploads them because he’s feeling generous. He looks great on all of them, sloppy drunkenness suits him. Then they scream in all caps _HOLY SHIT IS THAT A POSTER OF KATSUKI YUURI ON YOUR WALL??_

Victor takes three pictures with said poster because it was hard to find and Yuuri looks so pretty and Yuuri’s ass looks great and Victor is proud of it. He posts those too, says something about how ridiculously good Yuuri looks no matter the photographer. Then he decides that’s enough and goes to sleep.

(All the way in Detroit, Katsuki Yuuri is trying to convince his coach to take him to the hospital because he’s hallucinating Victor Nikiforov having a poster of him on the wall of his _living room_ and really something should be done about that. This kind of scenario certainly goes past daydreaming and into hallucination territory. Maybe he’s having a psychotic break. Maybe he took something he shouldn’t.)

(All the way in Detroit Phichit Chulanont is recording this and crying himself into hysteria.)

«»

“I’m changing my Exhibition for the coming season,” Victor tells Yakov, gleefully scrolling down his Twitter feed which has recently been filled with people sending him pictures of Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri. Victor might or might not accidentally have started a bit of a contest within the skating community. All the best pictures get a like. The true hidden gems get a retweet.

Victor should probably feel bad about having a separate album just for those hidden gems of Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri. But how could he when he finds things like that one picture of Yuuri in his teen years cuddling a toy poodle with the gentlest smile? Victor can’t be faulted, really.

“No,” Yakov says.

Victor looks up from his phone. “I’m not asking,” he says, cheerfully.

His Free Skate is… charged this season. Victor’s tired. He’s so tired sometimes it takes everything he has to pull himself out of bed in the morning and attend practice. He needs a distraction and Katsuki Yuuri has proven to be a perfect one. He’s pretty and his footwork is prettier. Victor might or might not have been watching a compilation of Yuuri’s Exhibition programs and getting this itch on the bottom of his throat that felt like _something_.

Yuuri’s birthday is right around Rostelecom Cup and Victor wouldn’t mind organizing a little surprise. Just to see how Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri would react, just to see what he would do. Victor doesn’t know yet if he’ll get assigned to Rostelecom, but more often than not the Russian Skating Federation likes pulling strings to get him there. They like that no one has beaten Victor at Rostelecom for years now, longer even than Victor has been winning the Grand Prix series.

So Victor goes through his Britney Spears selection and tries to decide what the best song would be.

«»

Victor, by some very cruel twist of fate does not get assigned to Rostelecom. Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri who had dropped off all his social media in the past couple of months does. And so does Georgi.

“It’ll be good for Georgi to have emotional support,” Victor tries. He’s been slowly trying to whether Yakov down into letting him tag along for Rostelecom. It’s… not going great. “After his last break up and all.”

“Georgi is dating that ice dancer girl,” Yakov says, not taking his eyes from where a couple of his skaters are practicing.

“Oh,” Victor says. He’s not really been paying attention to Georgi, too distracted with building up his programs for the new season and obsessing over Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri. ”Well, I should still support my rinkmate! You know how much I love supporting my fellow skaters!”

Which isn’t a lie. Victor legitimately loves seeing people be beautiful on the ice, he loves having to _work_ for his gold medals, and he loves watching skaters rise up and transform and evolve. He’s just… been doing it less lately.

“I’m not taking you to Moscow with me so you can bother that Japanese boy. He has enough on his plate.”

“What? Yakov! I would _never_ bother Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri. I just want to cheer Georgi on!”

“I’m not taking you to Moscow,” Yakov repeats. “I’m already taking an extra skater unnecessarily, I don’t need to be worried about two children instead of one.”

“Child- who? Little Yura? You’ll take little Yura but not _me_ , your prodigal child? Yakov! I’m wounded.”

“I’m not your father,” Yakov grumbles. “And little Yura is visiting his grandfather.”

Little Yura skates past them and smirks at Victor. “Have fun training alone!”

Victor squints at him.

“Yakov! Did you hear that?!”

“You’re twenty-six Victor, don’t tattle on the fourteen year old.”

“But Yakov!”

“No buts. You’re not coming to Moscow and that’s final.”

«»

Victor goes to Moscow. Yakov hasn’t managed to hold up against Victor’s incessant nagging since Victor was fifteen and perfected puppy dog eyes from watching Makkachin do it.

“He’s coming?!” little Yura explodes, pointing an accusatory finger at Victor.

Yakov sighs and uncaps a mini bottle of Vodka, which he proceeds to down.

“You can’t come!” little Yura shouts.

“Why not? I’m just being a good rinkmate. You should learn from me and-“

“Liar! You want to get on Katsuki’s dick! It’s all over the Internet!”

Well…

“If I run into Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri-“

“No! Shut up! You’re not allowed to talk to Katsuki. You’ll ruin him!”

Little Yura’s cheeks are very, very red, his fists clenched up like he’s about to fight Victor. Little Yura is reacting too strongly to Victor meeting a random skater.

“Oh,” Victor says, clarity washing over him as he taps his finger to his lips. “Do you have a crush on Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri too? That’s great! What’s your favourite routi-“

“Shut up!” Little Yura’s face gets redder. Victor is legitimately expecting to be dropkicked in the middle of an airport by a fourteen year old at this point. “Shut up shut up shut up! I hate you! I hope Katsuki beats your ass! He has more musicality in the nail of his middle finger than you have in your whole body, you washed up as-been!”

There’s a lot of things that Victor could say to that. Mostly that he agrees, mostly that he would _love_ for Yuuri to give him enough competition that Victor will find himself looking up at someone else in the podium and not being the one being looked up at.

Instead what he says is: “I’d love for Yuuri to beat my ass.”

Little Yura lobs his backpack at Victor’s face hard enough to break Victor’s designer sunglasses.

«»

(Yuri’s favourite routine is the very first one he watched Katsuki do when he was a scrawny little kid sitting on a beat up couch in Moscow at his grandfather’s apartment and watching skating competitions religiously.

Yuri can’t really remember the circumstances. He remembers that Katsuki was still in Junior’s and he remembers that something made him mad enough to change his Exhibition skate the day before he was supposed to do it.

He remembers expecting softness and delicacy and instead Yuuri Katsuki had stepped on the ice wearing a leather jacket and eyeliner and skating to an American rock song. He remembers Katsuki walking away from the press with this air of arrogance to him like he couldn’t care less.

Yuri remembers being _very_ impressed.)

«»

Victor spots Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri right after Yuuri gets off the ice during the training day before the competition.

Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri doesn’t seem to be doing that well. There’s something that seems to have been stealing his attention most of the time he was on the ice, crippling his step sequence from flourishing like they normally do, so now Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is talking to his coach in his tight Mizuno shirt and his slightly loose Mizuno sweats. His shirt has ridden up a little bit in the back and Victor can just see a silver of skin starkly contrasted by the dark colours of his clothes. Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is all sweaty, which Victor, as a gay, can appreciate.

Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri has this look of determination in his face, which Victor can also appreciate.

Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is uncapping a bottle of water and pushing his bangs back from his forehead and tipping his head back to take a long pull of his drink. Victor can see his Adam’s apple bobbing and Victor has not been paying attention as he walked towards Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri to maybe go say hi or something, so Victor trips over something and manages to fall face first on the floor.

He doesn’t do it subtly either because Victor Nikiforov has not been subtle once in his entire life, and as he takes a header he brings something expensive looking down with him.

There are many ways Victor had thought about meeting Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri, and none of them involved scrapped palms and a possibly bleeding nose.

«»

(A short list of things Yuri Plisetsky fucking hates are: not being allowed to practice quads, the fact that the ISU fuckers constantly underscore Katsuki, dog lovers, and the way Victor Nikiforov is eyeing Katsuki right now as he walks towards him completely oblivious to his surroundings.

Yuri can’t do much about any of those except the last one, and what he does is trip Victor up and cackle when he faceplants, since the idiot is too fucking gay to function.

This, of course, has the opposite result than he intended.)

«»

“You shouldn’t actually tilt your head back when you get a nosebleed,” says Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri, offering Victor a couple more tissues to cram up his nose.

It is very, _very_ hard to sound confident and sexy when you have a nosebleed, Victor finds. His voice sounds horribly nasally making his accent five times worse than it normally is, and he can’t very well be charming and enchanting when he was blue coloured tissues stuck up his nose and has to incline his head at an angle.

Also he keeps getting distracted by Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri who is still sweaty from practice and somehow got roped into keeping Victor company until a physician comes around to check him after so many people kicked up a fuss about him hitting his head – which he _didn’t_ – and all the _bleeding_ – which he is doing, but the blood vessels in Victor’s nose were always weirdly sensitive. As a kid he’d run head first into things and have a nosebleed for about 80% the time he spend on any playground. When he was still learning jumps the ice was constantly smeared with blood.

But still, Mama didn’t raise no quitter, so.

“Are you excited for the competition?” Victor asks, sounding like one of those mafia guys in American movies that took one too many punches to the face.

“Ah, excited?” Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri asks, fidgeting. “Um, not- not really?”

“No?” Victor prods.

“I’m nervous. I don’t really get… excited.” Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri does not look at him when he says this, and keeps anxiously cutting glances at the door like he can’t wait to get out of here.

Victor pouts about it a little bit.

“You have nothing to be nervous about,” Victor says, and it’s only because he’s paying such close attention to Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri that he sees his shoulders lock up. “You’ll skate beautifully. You always do.”

Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri’s face snaps towards him, his eyes very wide and his cheeks very red. “I- You- you’ve watched me skate?”

“Of course, why do you think I’m here?”

“Georgi Popovich is skating,” Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri says.

“I watch Georgi Popovich skate every day, but _you_. I couldn’t wait until the final to watch you skate,” he leans forward like they’re sharing a secret and tries not to breathe too hard so the bloodied tissues won’t come flying out of his nose. “I’m a little impatient sometimes, it’s a fault.”

Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri makes a very high sound in his throat that Victor thought only dogs or kettles could make. And because Victor never knows when to stop he continues, “It’s a little bit embarrassing how I couldn’t contain myself to come see you, don’t you think? But I just had to. Your musicality is unpaired.” Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is turning a very alarming shade of red. “And after I saw you practice I must say… you look better than in my poster.” And then he winks, for effect.

Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is somehow startled out into saying “you too” by the wink, and Victor barely has time to be delighted at the fact that Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri has posters of _him_ , before the door opens to let in the Russian contingence plus a physician and Yuuri hightails it out of there in record time.

Victor definitely pouts about that too.

«»

(Katsuki Yuuri has been working out how his first meeting with Victor Nikiforov was going to go since he was twelve and made the official decision that he would do whatever it took to skate on the same ice as the Most Beautiful Boy in the World.

Victor Nikiforov seems intent on _ruining that_ by being even more beautiful up close and _bleeding_ than Yuuri had expected and also by ruining Yuuri’s fantasy of finishing on the podium with him, somehow catching his attention and having Victor say “You skated beautifully, Yuuri, do you want to come out for dinner with me and a couple other skaters?” to which Yuuri would say yes and then he’d be a social disaster like he always is and he and Victor would end up in a corner trading dog pictures and then maybe – _maybe_ – he’d get Victor’s phone number.

How it goes is: Victor smacks his face on the floor hard enough to get a nosebleed as Yuri Plisetsky cackles nearby, then almost gives Yuuri a heart attack by saying he skates _beautifully_ and confirming that the poster in some of his Twitter pictures wasn’t photoshopped or part of some sort of mass hallucination and told Yuuri he looked good when Yuuri had sweat stains on his armpits and kept squinting because he could barely see a palm in front of his nose.

At which point, Yuuri’s anxiety went from its base level of 40 to 100 real fast and then fucked off somewhere during the next two days of performances since Yuuri’s entire life plan is ruined anyway.

Yuuri, somehow, ends up on the podium at Rostelecom. He ends up in first too.)

«»

It really should’ve been harder than it was to convince the good people who organize the Rostelecom cup to let Victor be the one who hands out the medals, but this is Russia and he’s Victor Nikiforov and if there’s anything his gold medals grant him is a free pass to do almost anything he wants.

So Victor puts medals around the winners’ necks and tells them how well they did, then he gets to Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri, who looks a little dazed, and takes a couple of seconds too long adjusting the medal around his neck to make sure it lays perfectly against his chest.

“You did beautifully, Yuuri,” he says and then passes over the bouquet of flowers he handpicked because Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is unfairly beautiful and because Victor wants to thank him for being such a spot of light in his last couple of months without actually saying it.

Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri starts crying.

“Thank you,” he chokes out, hiding his face in his arm and rubbing at his eyes with it. “That means a lot.”

Victor is equal parts panicked – because _oh god he’s crying_ , Victor can’t deal with people crying – and endeared because Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is _so full of emotion_ , he wears his heart in his eyes and the corners of his mouth and the delicate bend of his wrists and the tip of his fingers. And Victor wants to know more about him, wants to know what it feels like when Yuuri smears some of that emotion on Victor’s cheeks with the tips of his fingers.

«»

They go to dinner. They go to dinner with a bunch of other skaters and they sit in a corner of the table and Victor shows Yuuri pictures of Makkachin and Yuuri shows him pictures of Vicchan and of Hasetsu and of his roommate and of all the foods he likes and of food festivals and music festivals he managed to go to, and Victor feels like there’s something slightly wrong with the fact that he only has pictures of his dogs and, occasionally, pictures of trips with his mothers which are always very short on account of how busy they all are.

Victor gets a little tipsy and they swap phones a couple of times and take selfies with each other because Victor needs more than just Makkachin on his phone with a sudden and violent need. Then Victor decides he needs pictures of Moscow too, and he needs pictures of Moscow with Yuuri, and they walk very close together because it’s cold and they get lost and only find their way back to the hotel at three in the morning.

Victor does not kiss Yuuri at his door, but Yuuri, who might be a little more than tipsy, hugs him so tightly he lifts Victor’s heels off the floor.

And then Victor goes back to his room and stares at the ceiling for a long time, before he picks up his phone and calls Christophe.

“If we got married,” he says, not slurring his words in the slightest but speaking very quietly. “We’d have the best ass combined in the whole world. We’d be unbeatable,” he tells Chris.

“Victor, sweetie, what the fuck,” Chris tells him.

«»

(“I can’t believe you’re going to try to seduce Victor Nikiforov with the edgy routine,” Phichit cackles through Facetime.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Yuuri tells him, before he wets the tip of his finger with his tongue and uses it to wipe a bit of excess dark lipstick from the corner of his mouth. And then goes on to do his Exhibition Skate and makes sure he memorizes exactly where Victor is standing so he can hold eye contact in between one of the spins and Yuuri sliding on his knees à la Johnny Weir while the lyrics _I scream god forgive me please, ‘cause I want you on your knees_ echoes through the arena.)

«»

Victor as never felt as gay and blessed in his entire life as when he watches Katsuki Yuuri step on the ice wearing mesh and a winged eyeliner to skate to _Dark in my Imagination_.

He  has also never seen little Yura have such a fanboy freakout, which he only takes notice of by virtue of little Yura punching him repeatedly in the arm and alternating between quick Russian expressions of amazement and telling Victor to shut up and pay attention. As if Victor needed to be told that, as if Yuuri doesn’t hold exactly all of Victor’s attention right now.

Victor doesn’t think he can pay attention to anything else for the rest of his _life_.

«»

“I can’t believe I did that,” Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri keeps saying, later, at the banquet, sipping on his eighth glass of champagne and cutting nervous looks at Victor. “I can’t believe _I_ did _that_.”

Victor is still feeling very gay, even if Yuuri’s tie is atrocious.

“I really liked it,” Victor keeps saying. “You were amazing,” he keeps saying. “You could ask me to get on my knees right now and I would,” he carefully does not say, because that sounds like the kind of thing that would send Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri running for the hills.

“Do you want to dance?” Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri asks, after his twentieth glass of champagne, which Victor should have prevented him from drinking but Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri makes these upset little noises in the back of his throat and Victor felt like he was kicking a puppy every time he heard them, so he didn’t prevent Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri from drowning in too much champagne.

“I would love to dance with you,” Victor says, rawfully honest. He doesn’t know if Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri can dance since he’s looking decidedly past tipsy.

At this point it should come as no surprise that Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri does everything beautifully, including sweeping Victor off his feet in a tango. It should also come as no surprise that Victor who is lonely and bored and jaded and has somehow steadily found himself something very close to infatuated with Katsuki Yuuri, is spun by Yuuri’s hands into going well past infatuated and already being halfway through smitten.

Later, Victor still doesn’t kiss Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri at his door because Unfairly Beautiful Yuuri is very, very drunk, but he does make sure his number is in Yuuri’s phone and that Yuuri’s is in his.

And Katsuki Yuuri, who has made a little room for himself in the list of few things that bring Victor joy, texts him in the morning. And then keeps texting him and they never really stop until the list of things that bring Victor Nikiforov joy is about a mile long.

**Author's Note:**

> once i was reading some manga and one of the characters went "as a gay" when refering to themselves and to this day i still think that is the height of humor like oh yes, i, as a gay,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
> 
> also if youre wondering about the title the "curved trajectory" is the mathematical equation that charts out the curve of yuuri's ass, thanks, goodnight
> 
>  
> 
> [i have a tablerone or whatever that's called here](http://crossroadswrite.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Way to Life and Love is a Curved Trajectory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14248056) by [Carpe_History](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carpe_History/pseuds/Carpe_History)




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